


Pick Your Poison

by Smonky



Category: Cancer Crew
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - High School, Drinking, Drug Use, Eventual Smut, Homophobia, Max is a foreign exchange student, Multi, Partying, Slurs, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 22:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10751463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smonky/pseuds/Smonky
Summary: George, a common high school stoner, is having some trouble with his foreign exchange student Max. Max has a big alcohol problem and acts like a jackass whenever he drinks. They're always bickering like two children. But when something terrible happens at a party, their relationship will change forever.





	1. Ian's Party

“Oi! George get your ass down here, we’ve been waiting for - like - an hour!”

I flung the bathroom door open in one shove, causing a bang as it hit the wall. There was already a hole in the wall because Max threw the door open every morning. Goes to show that a doorknob, a wall, and Aussie rage doesn’t mix well. My parents didn’t seem to mind, as he was our exchange student. “You act like Ian’s house isn’t just down the street,” I replied in a usual lazy tone. “And my parents won’t be back until late tomorrow morning.”

Max rolled his eyes, obviously annoyed. “Whatever, cunt. I just want to get there before the line for booze is gets too long.” Ian’s parties were always top tier. There was always a ton of beer and if we were lucky, someone that I knew would offer some kush. I’d always accept obviously. Weed was always a treat at high school parties. Max was never a fan of weed. He would much rather chug cans of beer until he blacked out. I was impressed by his chugging skills. I tried to stay away from alcohol because I didn’t want to deal with a hangover the next day, which is why I stuck to drugs if possible.

We left my house at about 9:00, even though he told us to be there by 8:40. Fashionably late, I guess. It took us about 10 long minutes to get to Ian’s place. We were immediately greeted by a slew of screams which were all along the lines of “Look, I told you George and Max would show up!” I avoided all interactions and quickly beelined for the basement. Ian told me to meet him down there when I got to the party. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t there. But to my luck, a junior and two sophomore kids were smoking.

“Yo Calvin, mind sharing a bit of that with me?” I asked. Calvin was was in my English class. I was pretty bad at the class, which is why I was in a junior class. He always acted like tough shit but he stayed away from me most of the time. Calvin glanced at the two sophomores briefly, before patting the couch cushion beside him. The sophomores I knew a little. They were both exchange students that hung out with Calvin sometimes. Niall was from Britain. He was pretty quiet but I’ve heard that he was pretty funny from Ian. The other was Roman and he was from Russia. His English was pretty bad, but I could understand most of what he was saying.

Calvin tapped my shoulder to get my attention. “Blunt or bong?” I shrugged. “I don’t use a bong often, so I guess I’ll go with a blunt.” “Excellent choice,” Niall responded, passing me a freshly rolled blunt. His accent was thick, and his deep voice barely matched his body. I sat there for awhile, one hand on a blunt and the other clenching the couch. My eyes closed slowly and I leaned back. This was some good shit. It almost made me forget that I left Max all alone upstair.

“Aw fuck, man,” I grumbled, pushing myself out of the seat. “Sorry guys, but I left that cunt upstairs. I don’t trust him alone surrounded by booze.” The three looked at me quizzically, but I guess they understood. “Sure dude, alright,” Roman replied. And I thought Niall’s accent was strong. I ran upstairs as fast as a stoned high school kid can. I found Max sitting by the beer table, his arm wrapped around some girl I really didn’t recognize. I swear he told me he had a girlfriend back home, but I never believed him.

I grabbed his shoulder. He whipped around, his brows narrowed in anger. “What the hell do you want?” he practically shouted. “Ew have you been smoking? You smell like shit.” I wanted to punch him dead in the nose. “Have you been drinking? You smell like piss.” Max looked like he was going to swing first. The girl had wriggled her way out of his arm. Ian stood in between us just before things began to get ugly.

“Come on Max, settle down,” he said in a calm tone, patting his shoulder gently. Max was always closer to Ian than me, which made me a little bit jealous. As the Aussie was cooling down, I fled towards to door. Max wasn’t my problem anymore. I could have gone back downstairs with Calvin, Niall, and Roman but I didn’t even want to be in the same house as him. I stumbled my way down the street and towards my house.


	2. Max's Incident

I continued to keep my hand on Max’s shoulder, even after George left. “You good?” He nodded, placing his hand on mine. “Yeah, I think so. I think I need another though.” I turned to grab him another can. I pondered how much Max had to drink so far. I dismissed this thought quickly as I handed him the newly opened beer.

“Thanks, mate.” Immediately after thanking me, he began chugging the booze like a madman. A few people began cheering. I joined in near the end. As Max removed the can from his lips, he made a grunting sound of discomfort. “I think I gotta sit down, bro.”

I helped Max to the living room, and he quickly collapsed on the couch. He grabbed the throw pillow resting under his head and pressed it into his face. “I’ll be back,” I told him, running to go fetch a Gatorade and a glass of water. But before I could even fill the glass, I heard a girl screaming from the living room. My feet couldn’t get me there quick enough. There Max was, laying on his back, choking and gagging on his own vomit. “Get him on his side!” I shouted. The girl who helped him was named Hila. She was the girlfriend of Ethan, one of my good friends. He had already graduated when I was a sophomore, but he still showed up to all my parties. Hila was pretty cool, and I didn't mind when Ethan dragged her along. The gasping stopped as all his puke began trickling out of the side of his mouth, but Max wasn’t responding to anything. No amount of snapping, clapping, or yelling his name would get him to even shift. Hila said he had a pulse, but he was out cold and he felt clammy. Oh God what have I done?

I took out my phone as fast as I could and dialled 911. Many of my classmates began to bail. They didn’t want to go to jail for underage drinking. The only people who stayed were Ethan and Hila, and a few others. All of them had already graduated and surely legal. Once the dispatcher answered, I was practically sobbing into the phone.

“Yes hello? Uh, my name is Ian and I had a party at my house tonight and my friend is unconscious and he’s not waking up-” The lady on the other end asked me the usual; if he had a pulse, if he was breathing, how old he was, if he was drinking, and what my address was. I answered to the best of my ability, and I answered truthfully. “Please sent someone quick, he’s only seventeen and he’s not from America!-”

It only took a few minutes for red and blue lights to flash outside my window. Several men and women burst in and dragged Max out of the door in seconds. I watched them load him into the back of the ambulance truck and drive off in a flash. A few police officers questioned me and the other people who stayed with me.

“Am I going to jail?” I asked, on the verge of tears. I was incredibly sad that Max could be in a coma, but going to jail would be the cherry on top of this whole shit sundae. The officer shook his head. “You’re underage, but since you called you’re safe. However, we will be calling your folks and telling them what happened.” I picked at the hem of my t-shirt nervously. “Can you drive me to the hospital? I have to see if he’s going to be okay.” The man agreed. Ethan, Hila, Jack (my guide during freshman orientation), and his girlfriend Erin promised that they’d clean up as best as they could. I figured it would be pretty hard to clean a house after a senior party.

He led me to the police car and immediately after sitting down I looked at my phone as it beeped. A text from George.

'hey, hows things goin over there'

“Excuse me, I have to call someone.”


	3. The Hospital

My phone began to buzz in my pocket. It was Ian. Odd that he was calling me, but I picked up anyways. I was surprised that there was virtually no background noise. “Hey what’s goin’ on, man?” I said into the phone. The response that I got made my stomach jump.

“Max is in the hospital. He’s in pretty rough shape.”

I was lying before. Max was my problem. My parents trusted me to take care of him while they were gone. Now he was in the damn hospital because I was too busy smoking to pay attention to him when I knew he couldn’t control himself. “Uh… I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?”

I threw my laptop off my lap and onto the bed next to me. I pulled my hoodie back over my head, then ran down stairs. My car was running and out of the driveway in under five minutes. I’m not sure if I even locked the door on my way out.

The hospital wasn’t very far from my house, only about a fifteen minute drive because of traffic. Upon entering the building, I was met by a very concerned and frightened Ian taking to the woman at the desk. “I’ll take you back there George. But just as a warning, it’s not pretty.”

When we got back to his room, I almost began to cry. Max was laying in a hospital bed with an iv in his arm and hooked up to a breathing machine. Two or three doctors and nurses were at his bedside. “Ah, hello Mr. Miller, Mr. Carter,” one of the doctors greeted us. “I’ll give you the quick rundown. Max here has a pretty bad case of alcohol poisoning, he should be fine though, but his BAC was about 25% when he came in. He’ll probably wake up by morning, but he might not remember anything.”

I was relieved that Max was going to be okay, but looking at him hooked up to all those machines made me anxious. I felt responsible for this happening to him, even though I knew he did this to himself. “Can we stay here overnight?” I asked, sitting down in one of the bedside chairs. “Of course,” a nurse replied. “As long as you’re comfortable sleeping in those chairs with a few blankets and a pillow.” That’s all I needed. I’d be okay sleeping on the cold floor.

Hours felt like days. I couldn’t even shut my eyes until around 1 am. I couldn’t keep my eyes off Max as the machine manually made his chest rise and fall. But when 1 came, I finally was so exhausted that I couldn’t keep my eyes open. But a few minutes after closing them, I was startled away by someone talking. “Ian, wake up, Ian.” It was Max. He was awake. And trying to talk to the deeply asleep Ian. Ian wasn’t waking up anytime soon, so Max just continued to whisper in attempt to awaken him. It was like torture, him repeating the same things over and over.

But something he eventually said made me almost jump from my seat. “Ian, babe, I need to go the washroom. Get the nurse, babe.” I had to use all the self control I had in my body not to stand up and start screaming. Ian and Max? Was that possible? They both seemed pin straight. Didn’t Max have a girlfriend in Australia? I was confused beyond belief.

Eventually Max gave up and flopped back onto his bed and fell asleep pretty quickly. I just stayed wrapped in my blanket, eyes wide as the moon from shock. I glanced at Ian, who was drooling all over his hand which was propping up his head. I tried to shut my eyes again for the second time, and this time I was successful. The world seemed to drift away and I was secretly hoping that this was just some crazy dream.


	4. Morning After

I woke up in the early morning with the worst headache I’ve ever had in my life. Even my worst hangover headaches weren’t this bad. What happened last night? All I remembered was leaving the house with George, and the rest was all a blur. As my vision came to focus, I saw that I was laying in a bed that was not my own. At first, I thought that my night had gone pretty well. Until I realized that it was a hospital bed that I was in.

I looked over to see Ian and George sleeping in two of the three chairs set up beside my bed. A nurse quietly walked into the room, a warm smile on her face. “Good morning, hon. Are you feeling alright?” I answered honestly. “Nah, my head's killing me. You got any aspirin?” She nodded vigorously and left to go get it. Our conversation had woke Ian. He was pretty startled at first, until he seemed to remember where he was. He practically leapt from his chair to my bedside.

“You scared me, you dumb ass faggot.” I laughed at the good-natured insult. “What the hell even happened last night?” I rubbed my forehead, which felt like it was on fire. "I remember coming to your house and havin' a couple drinks but that's it." I looked up at Ian a mischievous grin. "Did we at least get to root?". He had grown to learn my arsenal of slang, though I usually tried not to use it often. Americans usually don't understand that kind of stuff. I flinched as he rose his hand, threatening to slap me. “Shut the fuck up, asshole, George is right fucking there!"

I shrugged, not really caring that much. Ian and my relationship was pretty secretive, but he cared way more than I did. George groaned as he was finally waking up. “Good morning,” he said simply, stretching out his arms and legs like a cat. “Crazy night, right?” I still wasn’t sure what was going on exactly.

Ian soon explained to me what happened. I felt like a total dickbag for all of it; yelling at George, getting blackout drunk, all of it. I apologized to George and Ian for putting them through all this. They were fine with it. Especially because none of us were going to get arrested.

The nurse finally came back with my aspirin and water, as well as breakfast for me and a bagel for each of the other two. I thanked her as the left the room. We ate in silence. Even after the medicine, I felt like shit. I could barely stomach the scrambled eggs and bacon without barfing it all up. Ian and George ate their bagels without a word, then watched me once they were done.

George looked a little freaked out, but I just brushed it off as being because I was eating like a slob or something like that. I’m not sure why else he would look at me with huge eyes and a frown.

After I was finished a doctor entered my hospital room and told me I would be able to leave by tonight if I was feeling up for it. I really wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible. I wondered if my host family knew what was going on. I couldn’t imagine how Ian’s folks would react if they knew he had a party with alcohol while they were away. I planned to tell them that I brought the alcohol and that Ian tried to stop me from drinking. My host parents wouldn’t be too harsh on me since I really wasn’t their kid.

The rest of the day rolled on slowly. Ian stayed with me, but George decided that he had to drive home to meet his parents before they came back. It was a smart move, I’ll admit. But I wouldn’t have had the balls to tell them what happened.


End file.
